


nothing, all the way up here

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 11:48:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18590650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: His watch keeps glinting in the sun.





	nothing, all the way up here

**Author's Note:**

> just a flash fiction piece I wrote for an English class that I ended up liking!!

His watch keeps glinting in the sun and he feels like it’s going to distract him at some point, but that’s just his first time jitters, his passenger reassures. 

Everything inside the cockpit is garish, jarring like the turbulence that suddenly rocks the plane and makes his passenger break into a wide grin, standing opposite to his sharp noise of alarm. If he listens close enough, he can hear the waves lapping at the sand below and crashing against the bluff. His gaze drifts to the island to his left, pulled by the sharp glow coming from its tallest point. It’s bright, like the jacket he bought on a whim and the paint in the cockpit and- 

The helicopter is tilting dangerously as his left hand pulls down unconsciously. Too quickly he rights himself and the plane lurches upright. His passenger laughs, but for once he doesn’t feel like it’s directed at his mistake. Maybe it’s the empty vastness of the sky and the ocean that makes the flutter in his chest rise, but he finds his own mouth stretching into a smile that rivals the sharpness of the sun on his face.

So far above everything familiar, he can’t help but be drawn back down in his thoughts; he spirals back to a white stone house, excruciatingly ordinary in a world awash with color. And oh, how he'd loved the colors that enveloped him so fully. 

Green like the grass that seemed to never be cut short enough in the summer. Pink like his sister’s cheeks in the wind and the faces of the fat pigs that nipped at her skirts. Blue like the water in the feed trough and the window that he wasn’t tall enough to peer through and the old stool he climbed on to do so anyway. Red like the hide of the mean old horse they were told never to go near. Red like the cat’s eyes, a stray that his sister found a month before and that had a habit of spooking the animals. Red like the blood that stained the glass as he was kicked through the window. Gray like his world became when he awoke.

The drone of the propellers brings him back to himself.

“What’re you thinking about?” his passenger’s voice crackles loudly in his ear.

His smile feels strained. “Nothing, all the way up here.”

A crisp laugh sounds from beside him, followed by a hand on his shoulder that shakes him good-naturedly.

The plane putts along above tree-speckled boulders that jut out of the ocean. He spies wisps of clouds forming around them, but they look friendly enough to refrain from kicking him out of their dominion just yet. 

He flies until he can't see the bold, red roofs of that stupid white house and sighs, still loathing the only splash of color in his little gray world.


End file.
